Less Miserables was a part ofMy Generation at Work -project, that was part of the European Union’s URBACT network. The project aimed to promote the employment of young people, particularly from the perspective of enterprising, entrepreneurial skills and attitudes. The main idea was to challenge the ways of thinking about entrepreneurship and to promote the entrepreneurial spirit of young people’s attitudes and entrepreneurial aspirations.

The project involved 12 European cities, Tampere, Antwerp, Braga, Gdansk, Glasgow, Maribor, Riga, Thessaloniki, Turin, Valencia and Warsaw. The coordinator was the city of Rotterdam.

Maria’s task in the project was to provide young entrepreneur’s perspectives and to participate in the events of the project as a participant and also as a speaker.

Joint meetings were organized between the partner cities across Europe. The fourth meeting was held in Tampere between the 17th and the 18th of June, 2014. The meeting was hosted by the Tampere project team. Over 70 people participated in the meeting.

During the meeting, the participants got to know how youth entrepreneurship – and thus also the employment of young people – is promoted in Tampere. During the meeting, each city also continued to develop their local action plan. Maria’s responsibility was presenting Proacademy, the entrepreneurial unit of Tampere University of Applied Sciences and shared with the participants her own entrepreneurial story.

Between the 25th and 27th of August, 2014 Tampere project team traveled to Glasgow. The goal of the trip was to learn how Glasgow takes care of youth employment and the entrepreneurial services. Maria was co-writing the study trip report after the trip.

In November 2014 Maria was asked to write a newsletter about Proacademy’s learning model, and also she was speaking about Proacademy’s social impact in the project seminar in Turin on the 18th of November, 2014, as well as in the Nordic Twin City Conference in Tampere on the 11th of November, 2014.

My Generation at Work project final conference was held in Rotterdam from between the 3rd and the 4th of March, 2015. By request, Maria wrote her own entrepreneurial story to the final report of the project. That was be published in May 2015. She was also co-creating the local action plan of Tampere project team.

I had an opportunity to work with Maria for two years. She joined our creative Trenterprise-team, where the main topic was how to promote entrepreneurship among young people. She was enthusiastic, creative and supportive during the whole process. It was a great pleasure to work with her! Thanks!

– Ene Härkönen, Trenterprise-team coordinator, City of Tampere

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